Urbanistas

Roca London Gallery presents the work of six women that represent the highest standards of cohesive design, women that are “changing the design of our cities today”.

“Urbanistas: women innovators in architecture, urban and landscape design” – on view at the Roca London Gallery – showcases the ideas of some of the finest women practitioners based in, or working in, the UK today.

Each is a role model for their peers and those entering the profession, showing incredible ingenuity and resourcefulness as they tackle societal needs through their designs for urban living.

Top: Liza Fior and Katherine Clarke, Muf Architecture/Art: Site of Ruskin Square, East Croydon. Above: Liza Fior and Katherine Clarke, Muf Architecture/Art Altab Ali Park, Whitechapel

The five exhibitors are Irena Bauman, co-founder of Bauman Lyons Architects, Leeds; Alison Brooks, founder, Alison Brooks Architects, London; Alessandra Cianchetta, co-founder of AWP, Paris; Liza Fior and Katherine Clarke, co-founders of Muf Architecture + Art, London; and Johanna Gibbons, co-founder, J&L Gibbons, London.   With projects completed and ongoing for sustainable urban and suburban mixed-use developments, a variety of housing types (including live-work), landscape architecture and masterplanning frameworks, the “Urbanistas” represent the highest standards of cohesive design. 

Alison Brooks, Alison Brooks Architects: Western Riverside housing

Exhibition highlights include: Alison Brooks’ innovative reinterpretation of the archetypal London garden suburb, Barnet, compact live-work housing, Harlow, and variations on the Bath Crescent housing typology on a former industrial site; Irena Bauman’s versatile retrofitting strategies with the community in Dewsbury and Holbeck, Leeds; multi-scalar urban design by Alessandra Cianchetta at AWP – from long-term strategic planning to detailed retrofitting work, at La Défense, Paris, regenerating 100,000 sqm of unused space for public use; Muf’s inspired integrative regenerative strategies, identifying and nurturing the community assets of areas such as Dalston, east London; and Johanna Gibbons’ vision of the city as a conceptual landscape.

Exhibition designers, the architectural firm Feix & Merlin, described their approach: "We designed a family of five objects, each individually adaptable to the selected exhibits, as a series of geometrically folded ribbons that echo the nature of the exhibition as well as respond to the interior design of Roca London Gallery itself.”

Johanna Gibbons, J&L Gibbons: Angel Building, Islington
Alison Brooks, Alison Brooks Architects: Park Up Hill, Dollis Valley
Irena Bauman, Bauman Lyons Architects: Tower Works, Holbeck, Leeds
AWP: Malmo Quay, Newcastle
AWP: Malmo Quay, Newcastle


6 March – 27 June 2015
Urbanistas
The women changing the design of our cities today

curated by Lucy Bullivant
exhibition design by Feix & Merlin
Roca London Gallery
Station Court, Townmead Road, London